


A Leap for the Leaper

by dramatic owl (snarky_panda)



Series: Long Way Home [5]
Category: Quantum Leap
Genre: Angst, Drama, Friendship, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-10
Updated: 2013-07-10
Packaged: 2017-12-18 07:39:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/877299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snarky_panda/pseuds/dramatic%20owl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam leaps to stop Al from leaping.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Leap for the Leaper

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks again to [cecilegrey](http://archiveofourown.org/users/cecilegrey/pseuds/cecilegrey) for the beta. Written for the LJ 5_times challenge prompt: hopeless. Disclaimer: Not mine, just this story.
> 
> Warning: Some in-character ableist language.

_**New Mexico** _  
_**May 22, 2005** _  
_**11:45 PM** _

I

There was no disorientation, no lag time. Sam immediately knew when and where he was from the sound of his invention activating, Ziggy's sultry feminine voice counting down minutes and seconds to ready, the sight of blinking colored lights from the machinery and the pulsing of the hybrid computer's blue interface orb.

He dashed toward the ramp leading up to the accelerator chamber, calling out his friend's name, throwing his arms around Al from behind and tackling him to the floor before he could go in. Then he shouted at Ziggy to shut the accelerator down and take it offline. Within seconds the noise level in the place had dropped, leaving only the hum of the air conditioning and Ziggy's machinery.

"What the…Sam?" Al's voice shot up an octave and cracked on Sam's name.

"Al, you _lunatic_!" He clutched him tightly, his heart pounding in his ears, and noticed with a shock how small Al felt in his arms.

"Sam!" he cried and squirmed beneath him, but Sam kept him pinned, unwilling to let him go. "Gee, Sam, I'd have fired that thing up years ago if I knew it would finally bring you home." There was relief and warmth and satisfaction in his voice.

"God, of all the hare-brained—"

"Come on, Sammy, let go and let me up so I can give you a big hug back."

"Shut up," Sam snarled into his hair.

"You're crushing me. Come on, let me up."

Relenting finally he shifted and rose to let Al up, holding out a hand to help him to his feet. Al said his name again and threw an arm around his shoulders, pulling him close and giving him a powerful hug, clapping him on the back.

"Oh, God, it's good to see you again, Sam."

"What the hell were you doing, Al?"

"I was coming to bring you home. They're shutting us down."

"That thing could have killed you!" His heart was still racing, his body trembling. "And even if it didn't, _you_ would have been lost in time! I can't believe you were gonna leave Beth behind! And how long do you think you would have survived leaping? You're seventy-one years old—"

"Seventy."

"What?"

"I'm seventy. I won't be seventy-one for another three weeks."

He smiled impishly and Sam glared at him.

"Damn it, it's not a joke, you scared me! Do you have any idea—?"

"Yeah, I do," Al cut him off. "Anyway, I would have managed."

Sam's anger and fright deflated at the transparent reference to his own reckless and ill-fated first leap. His shoulders drooped and he shook his head with a wry smile.

"Aw, don't sulk, Sam. I'm just saying I know." Al paused and then demanded, "So, where the hell have you been for the past five years?"

"I've been leaping."

"No kidding. But you're _you_. I mean, you're not changing places with other people anymore. We've had no way to track you." The grief in his voice was so tightly contained as to be practically imperceptible but Sam heard it, for he knew Al too well to miss it, and his heart hurt.

"I know. I'm sorry, Al..." Sam trailed off, sensing suddenly that someone else was there with them. He turned to look at the young woman in a white lab coat who had approached, a pretty woman in her mid to late thirties with long sandy brown hair and hazel eyes.

So Al wasn't alone like Beth believed after all, he thought with a frown. Did she have any idea he was locked in down here alone with this young woman?

Her gaze shifted warily between Sam and Al as if she was gauging the situation then it came to rest on Sam.

"Hello, Dr. Beckett. Welcome back." She spoke with a slight drawl and he looked closely at her. His struggle to place who she was must have shown in his face. "It's been a while and you're probably still a little Swiss-cheesed. I'm Dr. Fuller."

Together the name and the accent unleashed a flood of memory. Sammy Jo Fuller. He recalled working with this brilliant young woman, and then a series of leaps to Louisiana and she was there, too, but as a little girl. Abigail Fuller. This was Abigail's daughter…and _his_ daughter, who when she grew up ended up working here because of those leaps…and Al had involved her in this mess.

Sam shot him another glare then turned his attention back to her.

"Hi, Dr. Fuller." He followed her lead and kept it formal. She seemed to have no idea he was anything other than a boss to her. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were here."

"I'm glad you found us before we went looking for you. If you had arrived two minutes later Al would have been inside and we wouldn't have been able to shut the accelerator down without killing him."

"Yeah, Sam did always have perfect timing," Al grumbled.

She regarded both of them, brow furrowed.

"It's okay, Kid," he said, favoring her with an affectionate smile. "We're on hold. Go on and take a break while I talk to him."

"I'll be in my office. Good to see you again, Dr. Beckett."

"Al…" Sam began when she'd left the control room.

"Come on. If I'm not gonna leap now I want to change out of this monkey suit." He gestured to the white Fermi suit he was wearing.

Sam took in the sight of his friend's body for the first time and winced. Beth wasn't exaggerating when she said Al had lost weight. The skin-tight leap suit emphasized just how thin the man had grown, his ribs poking through the material.

"Hold down the fort, Zig," Al said as they passed the console.

"As you wish, Admiral."

"As you wish?" Sam repeated softly in amazement, stopping and turning toward the console. Ziggy and Al had indeed been spending a lot of time together. Still, despite her conciliatory tone he somehow sensed that the hybrid computer was in a snit. Other than shouting for her to shut down the accelerator he realized he hadn't acknowledged her at all. Though she'd never admit it she was probably miffed at that.

Al grinned at him and leaned in to speak confidentially. "Why don't you stay and get reacquainted. I'll meet you in my office in ten minutes."

II

Fifteen minutes later Sam was sitting on the beat-up brown leather couch in Al's office, leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees, watching his friend move about the room. Al was still wearing the leap suit, though he'd claimed that he wanted to change into his own clothes, and he paced the office like a caged animal, opening and closing drawers in the grey metal file cabinets, coming to the couch to sit down but changing his mind, returning to the desk to rummage through the drawers there.

"What are you looking for?"

Al stopped in the middle of the room, frowning, and raked his fingers through his hair. His normally clean-shaven face was covered with stubble, his unruly salt and pepper hair much longer than military regulation dictated. He looked exhausted and lost but there was something wild in his eyes too, and Sam straightened, his alarm growing as he observed him, then rose to his feet and went to him, grasping both of his shoulders.

"Al?"

"How did you know I was about to leap, Sam?"

"Beth."

"You spoke to Beth?"

Sam nodded, looking closely at the gaunt face, the dark circles under the bloodshot eyes, evidence that for too long he'd had little if any sleep. He didn't detect any smell of alcohol on Al, even close up, just the familiar faint scent of cigar smoke in his hair.

"It was a day or so in the future. You know, Beth thinks you're down here alone."

"Now don't get suspicious. Sammy Jo is your kid, so she's family, like another daughter to me."

"Then why didn't you tell Beth she was locked in here with you?"

"Because I didn't expect her to be here. She wasn't supposed to be but she guessed what I was up to and didn't evacuate. The kid staged her own little coup. Said she stayed to be my observer and—"

"What?"

He shrugged Sam's hands off his shoulders and began to pace again. "It was something we talked about not long after we lost contact with you but we waited to try it, until now. Actually _she_ wanted to leap, but she needed to be here to work the retrieval. We were a good match for the neural link, her being your daughter, so we set it up. Maybe that's why she knew what I was planning. I would've managed on my own if I had to and I told her I didn't want anyone else involved. But she insisted I needed her. She definitely inherited your obstinacy."

Sam glowered at him but Al was facing away, pacing toward the couch area. He moved to intercept him.

"Both of you had to realize how dangerous it would be for you, Al. And how would you have come back? You have a wife and daughters."

"Sammy Jo's been perfecting your retrieval program," he said with a proud grin. "Absolutely brilliant, that kid. Not that anyone's surprised. Anyway, this was our chance to try it out, and Ziggy calculated the odds it would work at seventy-seven percent. Not perfect but a hell of a lot better than they were when you leaped. She's probably working on it in her office as we speak. She's like you once she's involved with something. At least _she_ takes breaks though."

"I took breaks. Sometimes."

Al was already walking away from him and Sam followed him to the desk.

"It wasn't always you coming to drag me away. I came in here a lot, too," he said, sitting on the edge of the desk while Al rummaged through the drawers again. Instead of scrutinizing him this time Sam gave him space and looked away, eyes combing the room now. He hadn't been in here in years.

The room was as he remembered, though some things had changed from one timeline to the next. Al's office still looked like someone's living room with its worn-out but comfortable couch and leather armchairs around a low wood coffee table that was really used as a footrest. They'd had plenty of informal meetings around that table before he leaped, him and Al alone or with Gooshie and Tina, but then as reality shifted with one or both of Donna and Sammy Jo added to the mix. The file cabinets and the old-fashioned heavy oak desk he perched on were placed along the wall furthest from the meeting area.

Small touches in the room were different. Family photos that hadn't been there originally now sat on the desk and the bookshelves along the wall adjacent to it - Al and Beth's wedding picture, the girls' graduation pictures, family vacation pictures. A large throw in yarns of various shades of mauve, pink, light yellow and tan that Beth had crocheted was tossed across the back of the couch where there had once been a tattered tan fleece blanket.

A large framed map of the world Sam didn't recall ever seeing was mounted onto the wall behind the desk. It was covered with pins and arrows drawn in black pen. He slid off the desk and went over to get a closer look, discovering that each of the pins was stuck in the middle of a country name. Tiny numbers, dates, were neatly written underneath each pin, the arrows stretched from one pin to the next in date order, and it hit Sam that Al had been tracing Trudy's route around the world. The arrows were linear at first – as if she was just going to circumvent the globe in a perfect circle – but then they began crisscrossing all over the map as her path became less predictable and she shifted back and forth between continents. Al must have used a ruler. The arrows were perfectly straight and neat. Dates were as early as August 2001 and as late as February 2004.

"That's Trudy's route. You wouldn't remember that. You were already leaping long before she left to travel."

"Wow. This took real dedication."

"Yeah, well, I couldn't keep track of you anymore so it kept me busy." Al's dig wasn't lost on him. "Anyway, Sammy Jo and Ziggy had a theory that because of our neural link I would leap to wherever you were. But it took a few years for Sammy's work on the retrieval program to pay off—"

"It was still risky," he chided, turning away from the map. Al had returned to the couch area and was leaning on one of the armchairs from behind, his hands white-knuckled as he gripped the high back. Sam went to him swiftly but Al straightened before he reached him. He stopped at the couch, poised to assist Al if necessary. "So, what, is Ziggy single-handedly running the whole project now?"

"Well, not the whole thing."

"How long do you think you can carry this on? Besides what it's doing to you, running Ziggy and the imaging chamber requires massive amounts of power and I bet they'll be shutting you off soon. Even if it's by sabotage. I'm surprised they haven't." He gasped. "Al, if they had shut the power off while you were in the accelerator—"

"They tried. The power, the plumbing—"

"Tried—"

He smirked. "But Ziggy found a work-around. It'll be next to impossible for anyone to catch on, and it's not like we're keeping the entire place powered up, just certain areas."

Sam groaned and sank down onto the couch, closing his eyes. He pressed his fingers to his temples.

"So, Beth told you I was gonna leap?" Al asked, seemingly oblivious to Sam's pained reaction.

"I guessed. And you had probably already leaped at that point." He dropped his hands to his sides and stared hard at him. "But she told me what's been going on. She told me you got Ziggy to shock the M.P.s when they tried to get in here."

Al looked far too pleased with himself.

"It's nothing to be proud of, Al. As if things weren't bad enough. You're gonna end up in jail if they get in. Or you'll starve to death down here eventually if they don't, and you've involved Sammy Jo—"

"After the elevator they may just shoot me on sight if they get in here. You know, Ziggy finds the defiant side of human nature especially fascinating."

"I'll bet," Sam muttered, shaking his head at him. "I should kick your butt for all of this. I won't even ask what the hell you were thinking staging this ridiculous stunt because you obviously weren't. How could you do something so stupid? You've got to realize—"

"Hey! This so-called stupid stunt got you back here. That's something, isn't it?" He added something under his breath that Sam didn't hear but didn't need to.

He sighed. "I guess you want to kick my butt, too. You were angry at me when I leaped. Maybe you still are."

"Of course I was angry at you! That was a stupid thing to do, leaping before everything was ready, _and_ you went behind my back, Sam. For a genius you can be a real _stupido_. Then when we finally found you your memory was gone and you didn't even know who I was."

Al turned his back on him with a sour expression and paced away again. Sam thought of their encounter in Rio in the changed timeline, when he'd retained all of his memories of a friendship that had never been and Al had no idea who he was; and he understood with sharp clarity and remorse how painful that moment must have been for Al.

Sam wanted to apologize, to try to explain, but Al spoke first, pivoting to face him again, the tension in his shoulders easing.

"But I moved on," he said. "Even if I wanted to stay angry at you – and I didn't – it wouldn't have done any good. Besides, you needed my help."

"Beth told me you stopped eating and sleeping well after I leaped. She's been really worried about you for a long time."

"I'm her husband," Al said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "All wives worry about their husbands."

"That's not all it is and you know it."

"Anyway, I'm not letting them shut the project down while you're still out there, alone. And I can't let them kill a sentient being. Besides, Ziggy has the instinct to survive so it didn't take much to convince her to do things my way. She understands what's at stake." He came to the couch and finally plopped down next to him, leaning back with a weary sigh and rubbing his forehead. "And you are still out there alone. This is just a leap. You're not home."

"Oh, Al, you don't need to do this—"

"Are you kidding? I should have tried this five years ago. I'd have gotten your tail back here then."

"Al."

"God, Sam, we thought you died and your body never came back, that you just died lost somewhere in time." There was a quaver in Al's voice and he stopped, drawing in a deep breath. "Man, I need a cigar. I left them all upstairs. Damn." He dragged his sleeve across his eyes. "So, how far in the future are you?"

"Actually I think I may be from your past."

"Then you're leaping to the future? How are you supposed to know what to do in the future? Or even in the past if you don't have Ziggy and me to give you information?"

"I have to figure it out as I go. Sometimes I learn things in the future and then leap back to fix it, like now."

"Then you don't need help anymore," he stated, his voice flat.

"It's not that I don't need…or want help," Sam said gently, "I had to go on alone, without the project, even though…" His voice broke unexpectedly and he swallowed hard then took a deep breath before continuing. "Even though I wanted you to continue on with me more than anything."

"Who the hell said you had to go on alone?"

"I should have made contact with you before, and I owe you an explanation."

He was about to say more but Al was on his feet again, wandering toward the door distractedly. Sam jumped up and went after him, grabbing his arm.

"What's wrong, Al? What's going on with you? And why are you still wearing that leap suit? I thought you wanted to change."

"Let's go upstairs, Sam. I really need a cigar."

Sam narrowed his eyes. "Al. You better not be thinking of leaping still."

"I'll change when I get upstairs."

But they didn't go upstairs. When they got out the door Al hurried through the empty white corridor, Sam trailing after him, back into the control room where he asked Ziggy what the odds were that she could keep a lock on Sam once he leaped out of there.

"There is never a one hundred percent certainty of anything, Admiral," she hedged. "The possibility of beating the odds always exists. However, my connection to Dr. Beckett's brainwaves was severed two days eighteen hours and twenty-two minutes after the completion of his leap into Elvis Presley in Memphis, Tennessee on July 3rd, 1954. Contact was never reestablished."

"Elvis?" Sam repeated, confused. "No, I—"

"Elvis was the last person in the waiting room, Sam," Al told him. "No one else ever showed up in there again."

"I know, but—"

"Ziggy lost the connection a couple of days after you leaped out of Elvis and—"

"I did not lose the connection, Admiral," Ziggy corrected him, almost sounding annoyed. "Dr. Beckett severed the connection."

"I don't understand," Sam said. "There was another—"

But Al had already left the control room.

"Could you just stop moving for a minute, Al?" he muttered in frustration, going after him again.

There was no sign of him, no sound of footfalls in the hallway indicating the direction he went. For a few minutes he stood listening, hearing only the hum of the machinery, thinking of how odd it was to find his project so utterly empty again. Just Sammy Jo in one of the offices down the hall and Al…somewhere.

He probably went upstairs to his sleeping quarters to get his cigars, Sam thought, and he went to the stairwell and climbed the two levels.

III

Al's sleeping quarters were different. When he was a single man he'd been in a large room at the other end of the hall, living here at the project. This time he'd deliberately chosen smaller quarters with the idea that he wouldn't be sleeping here unless necessary. He'd be going home to Beth and the girls. There was room enough for a small desk with a lamp and chair in one corner and on the other side of the room an upholstered blue wing chair for reading, a small night stand and the queen-size bed, which was currently unmade, Sam noted with raised eyebrows. Al was career Navy - it had been ingrained into him to keep his room and everything in it immaculate and neat. Without opening the closet he knew he'd find the few clothes hanging in there pressed neatly and organized by color, the shoes lined up precisely on the floor.

Then again, maybe he would be wrong about that now, too. He would never have believed Al would leave his bed messy, even if he _was_ going to leap into oblivion.

"After you leaped out of Elvis Ziggy was able to keep track of you for those two days or so, Sam," he said around the Cheval clenched in his teeth. Sam watched concerned as with visibly shaking hands Al fumbled with the matches and after several attempts finally lit one. "I knew you were still out there somewhere when Beth appeared here. And our girls. But we still couldn't find you."

Sam was speechless. Until this moment he hadn't considered that Al might be aware of the timeline changing around him, that he too would retain memories of them all. From his own experience Sam knew that sifting through and keeping track of memories from various shifting realities could be confusing to say the least. It might easily drive a person to distraction. Maybe that's why Al was so unbalanced and erratic…

"I owe you."

He shook his head vehemently. "You don't owe me anything."

"But if I knew you'd be giving up coming home to get Beth back for me—"

"I did what I should have done for you the first time around," he insisted, moving closer to Al and touching his arm. Al wouldn't look at him, instead staring down at the burning cigar in his hand. Curls of thick smoke lazily drifted upward from the end. "Al, you're not to blame for any of it." _I am_ , he left unsaid.

"Twice you gave up your chance to come home because of me."

Sam wordlessly wrapped his arm around Al and gave him a comforting squeeze then he guided him over to the bed and coaxed him to sit on the edge.

"It was my choice." He took the wing chair, dragging it up so he could sit face to face with him. "And it was my choice to leap in the first place. I have to live with the consequences but you don't. You should be enjoying your life with Beth and your daughters, not killing yourself over this project, over me."

Al stared at him through narrowed eyes. "Live with what? Everyone working on this project wanted to be here. You were foolish jumping the gun before we were ready, before the retrieval program worked, and you were lucky the thing didn't kill you. But it worked and every scientist here was thrilled to be part of the experiment of a lifetime. For me it was the next kick in the butt, helping you build all this then being there with you while you traveled through time. There really isn't anything can top flying to the moon. But _this_ …" He gestured around him now with the cigar, sending wisps of smoke in all directions, and grinned. "This came close."

"That's right. You still joined NASA and went on one of the lunar missions in this timeline," Sam murmured, recalling Al without Beth and Al with her. In both timelines a restless, troubled man with far too much energy who was always craving the next thrill. A devoted husband and a loving father the second time around but still unable to settle down completely, jumping at the chance to accept the next mission or sign onto a new, exciting project.

"I almost didn't go. Beth waited so many years for me to come back from 'Nam. Well, you know, it didn't seem fair to ask her to wait, to risk losing me again. But she insisted, said it was a once in a lifetime shot and if I didn't take it I'd regret it, that she didn't want that."

He held the cigar over the ashtray on the nightstand and pensively watched the ashes drop. Sam found himself staring at it, too, idly thinking how much more slowly cigars burned and of his father, who smoked cigarettes for his entire adult life. With John Beckett's already strong predisposition toward heart disease they had been his death sentence. Sam worried that Al would suffer the same fate given how long he'd been smoking and the number of cigars he smoked, but Al always insisted he was in tip-top shape considering his age and people should just leave him alone.

Al broke the silence. "She always did understand me too well. The woman's a saint."

"Yeah, well she puts up with you," Sam ribbed.

"That she does." He combed a hand through his hair and frowned. "Sam, did you think that because I had Beth you wouldn't matter to me anymore? That I would give up on you?"

"I didn't think I was part of your life anymore," he answered honestly. "When I first changed your history I changed our meeting so it didn't happen. I ran into you on a leap."

"So, at some point after the Elvis leap we weren't friends and I didn't exist as part of the project."

"You and Ziggy. Maybe that's why there's no record of anything after that, why you don't remember. And why the connection was broken. Somehow I changed things again. There was a leap…"

He took a deep breath, preparing himself for the worst, and recounted the details of the leap into the strange bar in Cokeburg to Al, who puffed on his cigar and listened patiently, his face impassive at first but darkening as Sam went on.

"Sam, I don't know who the hell this bartender was but he sounds like a nozzle who messed with your head and I don't like it. He knew exactly what to say to you. You, the terminal Boy Scout. And whoever he was, it seems to me you only got half his point."

"Huh?" Sam squinted at him.

"You weren't there to help the two men trapped in the mine in that leap, right?"

"Not directly."

"Exactly. Several other people were involved with the rescue. That other leaper, Stawpah, and the other miners that went down to physically save them."

He waited for more. "And? What's your point?"

"That _is_ the point. There are other people who are willing to help and who can pick up the slack. You don't have to do everything alone and you're allowed to take a break. But somehow, from all that, _you_ concluded that you had to go on alone forever and leave everyone who cares about you behind wondering what the hell happened to you."

Sam gaped at him.

"Ahhh, I should've known. Maybe I did know. I always said you got a lot of Boy Scout in you. But I never pegged you thinking of yourself as a martyr."

"I'm not a martyr," he protested. "And I don't think of myself as one."

"Saint Beckett."

"Stop it."

"Mother Teresa. You know what Mother Teresa said—"

"Al," he growled.

"When she won the Nobel Prize in 1978, no 79—"

He already knew what Al was thinking and that he was intentionally provoking him. "I don't want to hear it."

"They asked her what we can do to promote world peace—"

"I told you I don't—"

"She said 'go home and love your family'."

The man was unreal. Sam shook his head at him incredulously. "God, Al, why do you insist on telling me things when I say I don't want to hear them?"

"It was for your own good. You needed to hear that."

Still shaking his head Sam slumped back in the chair and rolled his eyes in exasperation. "And since when do _you_ know so much about Mother Teresa?"

"Listen. For five years I watched you change strangers' lives for the better. I watched you risk your life for them. You _have_ done a lot of good. But when is it gonna be enough? And what about everyone here? If you're in control now why can't you balance both? I thought you wanted to come home."

"I did…do. It's just, how can I turn away from people in need when I'm in a position to help them?"

"So, how's your memory?" he asked, his jaw clenched.

"What?" Sam was startled by Al's swift shift in gears.

"Do you remember…?" He stopped himself, leaving the question hanging in the air unfinished.

His shoulders sagged and he nodded resignedly. "Yeah, I remember Donna."

Al seemed relieved. "Did Beth remind you?"

Sam's face grew warm with shame and he didn't answer.

"I'm not surprised. Donna's situation is a sore point for her as you can imagine."

"I know. And I know I need to deal with it. I can't understand why I didn't remember her."

"Maybe because you weren't married to her before you leaped. She wasn't here originally."

"Yeah, maybe," Sam answered distantly but he still couldn't accept that. He loved Donna as ardently as ever. How could he have forgotten her? "But I remember all the timelines. So I should have remembered her in two of them at least."

Al's silence spoke volumes and he nodded.

"I've been thinking that maybe I didn't do the right thing…changing things for her. I just set her up for another disappointment. Maybe she would have been better off if she never married me."

For a minute Al studied him. Then his eyes widened and he was on his feet once more, striding over to the closet, standing on a stepstool he kept in there, pushing things on the top shelf around with one hand while the other still held the cigar.

"What are you doing now?" Sam's patience was waning.

He was holding a shoebox under one arm when he stepped off the stool, which he brought over to the desk. Sam stood and went over, his curiosity piqued. Al set his cigar in the ashtray on the desk before pulling off the rubber band around the box and removing the top. It contained photographs and he began to sort through them.

"I don't know why Beth didn't…there's something you need to know before you go and do what I know you're thinking of doing."

Sam hated when Al did that. "No, Al, you don't know what I'm thinking," he said, but Al was suddenly sticking something in his hands and he trailed off, staring slack-jawed at the photograph he now held. The bright overhead lights cast a glare on the glossy surface and he tilted it and brought it closer. Donna with a dark-haired, dark-eyed little girl who was the spitting image of her but had his cleft chin, a longer, thinner face than Donna and an expression that was so like his own father it brought a lump to his throat.

"It can't be," Sam whispered and he shivered, now recognizing in the child's face the extremely troubled teenager he'd met on a recent leap seven years in the future, a young girl who would have died if not for his intervention; and he felt sick as the implications of the girl's identity came crashing in on him. "Alison."

At the same time Al said, "Her name is Alison Joan Beckett, after Donna's mother Alice and your father John. She'll be five on June 2nd. Remember when we simo-leaped and you got to come home to September 1999 for a day?"

Sam felt his breath leave him.

"God, she's a terrific kid, Sam. They haven't done any IQ tests yet but she's way up there, and there's no question she inherited your musical talent in spades and then some."

The photo slipped from Sam's trembling fingers. Al's warm hand on his shoulder pulled him out of the memory that had gripped him and he lowered himself into the deskchair. He felt faint.

"Al, I met her."

"What? Met who, Alison?"

"Yeah, in the future, I met her on a leap."

Al bent to pick up the photo and set it down in front of him. Sam leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desk, dropping his head onto his hands and studying the picture. They were seated, both wearing lavender, Donna holding Alison on her lap, their faces close. Both were beautiful, smiling for the camera, but sadness shadowed his wife's eyes. His heart squeezed painfully and he shut his eyes against thoughts of the dismal future, the tragedy he knew was in store for both of them. But he could stop it…

"That bad?" Al asked softly.

Sam opened his eyes with a start and looked up to see the deep concern in Al's face.

"Worse," he rasped.

His friend said nothing, waiting. Sam opened his mouth to explain and found that he couldn't bring himself to put into words what happened on that leap and what it meant.

"Alison knew me, Al," was all he said. "She recognized me."

The anger and pain in the girl's face when she looked at him, everything she'd said, all of it was vivid in his mind. He thought she'd mistaken him for someone else, or was simply resentful that he'd interfered. Now he realized there was so much more to it.

Al seated himself on the edge of the desk.

"That's not surprising. Donna showed her pictures of you and talked about you. She wanted Alison to know her father and what he was like, for the day he came home. Even if she didn't remember the photos entirely she probably recognized that white streak in your hair and put two and two together. How old was she when you met her?"

"It was July 2012. Twelve. God, she was only twelve." Sam gazed at the picture. "No wonder she looked so familiar."

Donna. She'd reminded him of Donna, and yet the memory of his wife had stubbornly remained out of his reach. He still couldn't understand it.

And he had a daughter. Two daughters.

"Oh God. Does Donna know what happened? That Sammy Jo is my daughter?"

"She's one of the key people on the project. It was pretty impossible to keep it from her."

"Ziggy could have—"

"No, that leap had nothing to do with her. Ziggy had no reason to restrict her access to information about it other than to spare her feelings and Ziggy never cared about that. Donna understood that leaping required you to do things that you wouldn't ordinarily do, and that in the long run it was for the greater good. You're really two of a kind, you and Donna. Both of you putting everyone else in the world over your own happiness."

Sam was quiet, staring again at the two lovely faces looking back at him from the snapshot. His own family.

"You keep that photo with you, Sam. I want you to have it."

He smiled at Al. "Alison mentioned you. Her Uncle Al."

"Well, you are family," he said with a shrug, easing himself off the desk. He replaced the top on the shoebox, slipped the rubber band around it and went to return it to the closet shelf. "You and Donna and Alison. Remember, you're Uncle Sam and Aunt Donna to my girls too."

Sam rose and took out his wallet, slipping the photo into one of the see-through plastic compartments. He grazed his finger over the picture, lovingly tracing the contours of his wife's face then letting his fingertip settle under his little girl's chin. After a while he closed the wallet and put it in his pocket. Al came up to stand beside him again, looking morose, and Sam rested a hand on his shoulder.

"Don't worry. Everything will be okay."

"Always the optimist," Al sulked. "This is a mess and you know it."

"Yeah, I know it."

"I knew it too. It was reckless…but I was running out of options." He agitatedly scrubbed a hand over his face and groaned. "Oh God, Beth."

Sam sighed and gave his shoulder a squeeze. "I know, Al. But I'm still leaping. I'll figure this all out. It'll be okay."

"Well, if you ever decide to take a break from leaping Sammy Jo is raring to go and fill your shoes. You should've seen the disappointment on her face when we decided she needed to stay and work the retrieval instead of me. So you can, you know—"

"Pass the torch?" Sam said wryly.

"Sure, why not? What are you, fifty now? You're not a spring chicken anymore, you know."

"Gee, _thanks_."

"The point is unless you've attained immortality since I last saw you, you won't go on forever. Who will do this after you're gone?"

"God, Al, I've really missed you."

His friend just looked at him. "That's a funny thing to say when you're about to leave."

Sam smiled ruefully. Al did always sense when it was time for him to leap, almost in the same moment Sam knew it. He pulled Al into a bear hug, savoring the feeling of being able to touch him, more calmly now, and of the arms coming around in return to hold him, breathing in the heavier smell of smoke that had seeped into Al's hair and leap suit. He never imagined he could miss the smell of cigars so much.

"Would you do me a favor?" Sam asked after they released one another.

"Name it."

"Promise me you won't leap after me."

Al grimaced.

"Please, Al. I'm not lost so you don't need to find me. I'll find you. All of you." He held out his hand. "I promise."

"Okay, Sam," he said finally, reaching out and grasping his outstretched hand. They shook on it. "I won't leap after you. I promise. And I promise I'll take the damn Fermi suit off."


End file.
